...for any bare assertion of religious conflict to trigger strict scrutiny for every federal regulation. It is proper for the courts to be highly deferential on the question of whether a litigant's religious beliefs are sincere, but whether the burden on these beliefs is substantial is an inquiry the courts are not merely permitted but obligated to make. This inquiry should dispose of the challenge to the mandate, because in this case the burden on employers is trivial. The ACA's regulations do not require anybody to use contraceptives contrary to their religious beliefs, and the employers are not implicated in the decision to include contraceptives as part of the package that employers must provide employees in order to maintain the tax benefits of paying employees in health insurance in lieu of wages. The triviality of the burden involved here is particularly obvious, given that Hobby Lobby covered several of the contraceptives it now challenges in its employee insurance package until 2012—an alleged burden onits religious beliefs that it failed to notice until it became convenient for a larger political purpose. That's pretty much the definition of an 'insubstantial' burden...

...for any bare assertion of religious conflict to trigger strict scrutiny for every federal regulation. It is proper for the courts to be highly deferential on the question of whether a litigant's religious beliefs are sincere, but whether the burden on these beliefs is substantial is an inquiry the courts are not merely permitted but obligated to make. This inquiry should dispose of the challenge to the mandate, because in this case the burden on employers is trivial. The ACA's regulations do not require anybody to use contraceptives contrary to their religious beliefs, and the employers are not implicated in the decision to include contraceptives as part of the package that employers must provide employees in order to maintain the tax benefits of paying employees in health insurance in lieu of wages. The triviality of the burden involved here is particularly obvious, given that Hobby Lobby covered several of the contraceptives it now challenges in its employee insurance package until 2012—an alleged burden onits religious beliefs that it failed to notice until it became convenient for a larger political purpose. That's pretty much the definition of an 'insubstantial' burden...